The Bhonsles originated among the populations of the Deccani tiller-plainsmen who were known by the names Kunbi and Maratha. At the time of coronation of Shivaji, Bhonsles claimed their origin from SuryavanshiSisodia Rajput. Allison Busch, Professor at the University of Columbia states that Shivaji was not a Kshatriya as required and hence had to postpone the coronation until 1674 and hired Gaga Bhatt to trace his ancestry back to the Sisodias. While the preparations for the coronations were in process, Bhushan, a poet, wrote a poem about this genealogy claimed by Bhatt in "Shivrajbhushan". Using this example, Busch shows how even poetry was an "important instrument of statecraft" at the time. Scholars suggest that Pandit Gaga Bhatt was secured in charge of authoritatively declaring him a Kshatriya as Bhonsales being Marathas did not belong to Kshatriya nor any other upper caste but were mere tillers of soil as Shivaji's great-grandfather was remembered to have been. Bhatt was made compliant, and he accepted the Bhonsle pedigree as fabricated by the cleversecretary Balaji Avji, and declared that Rajah was a Kshatriya, descended from the Maharanas of Udaipur. Bhatt was rewarded for the bogus genealogy with a huge fee. The Brahman acknowledgement of Kshatriyahood is therefore taken as political. The passage from the Dutch records suggest the plausibility of this argument. The report of Shivaji's coronation in the contemporary Dutch East India Company archives indicates that Shivaji's claim was contested twice at the ceremony itself. Firstly the Brahmins did not want to grant him the status of Kshatriya and then they refused him the recitation of the Vedas, indicating Shivaji was admitted to the fold of the higher varnas as far as the sign of the sacred thread was concerned, but restricted in their use of the concomitant ritual rights including the recitation of the Vedas. Historians such as Surendra Nath Sen and V. K. Rajwade reject the Sisodia origin by citing the temple inscription of Math, dated to 1397 and holds the view that the genealogy was forged by Shivaji's men. According to R. C. Dhere, Bhonsles are descendants of the founder of Shikhar, Balip. He argues that the name Bhonsle is linguistically descended from Hoysala. There is a branch of Bhonsle clan extant in Maharashtra that goes by the name Śirsāṭ Bhosale and Balip's full name, from inscriptional sources cited by Dhere, was 'Baliyeppā Gopati Śirsāṭ'. Some Mudhol firmans in the possession of the Rajah of Mudhol claim the descent of the Ghorpades under the Adil Shahs and the Bhonsles, from the Sisodia Rajputs of Udaipur. However historians consider these firmans spurious as these are the copies, written by a scholar of Bijapur dated to c.1709, much after the coronation of Shivaji. André Wink, a professor of History at University of Wisconsin–Madison, states that the Sisodia genealogical claim is destined to remain disputed forever. Following historical evidence, Shivaji's claim to Rajput, and specifically Sisodia ancestry may be interpreted as being anything from tenuous at best, to inventive in a more extreme reading.
